Eric John Knysz, then 19, was driving his father’s pickup truck from Ludington to his home in Lake County, his wife beside him.

There’s no evidence the two men had ever heard of each other. But their paths crossed around 6:20 p.m. on that late-summer evening, ultimately ending both their lives -- both by Knysz’s hand.

Butterfield died that night, shot in the head without provocation. Knysz died Thursday, April 17, 2014, three days after he hanged himself in his prison cell.

The Michigan Department of Corrections late Thursday afternoon announced that Knysz, 20, had been removed from life support at around 10:30 a.m. He had been on a ventilator, brain dead since shortly after his suicide attempt and kept alive so his organs could be harvested, according to his family.

“It’s sad for everybody,” Michigan State Police Capt. David Roesler, commander of the Grand Rapids-based District 6, said Thursday evening. “It’s just sad for the Butterfield family, sad for the Knysz family. What a waste.”

Mason County Sheriff Kim Cole, a personal friend of the slain trooper who rode in the ambulance with him after the shooting, was reflective.

“That being said, life is all about choices. ... Sadly, Paul’s killer made a series of bad choices, not only that night but throughout his life,” Cole said.

“In the end, he had nobody to blame but himself for where he ended up.”

Knysz hanged himself with a bed sheet at the Charles E. Egeler Reception and Guidance Center in Jackson, four days after he was transported there from the Mason County Jail to begin serving a life sentence. Mason County 51st Circuit Judge Richard I. Cooper sentenced him April 8 to life without possibility of parole for first-degree murder of a peace officer. A jury convicted him of that and other charges Feb. 25.

According to Sarah Knysz’s testimony at her husband’s trial, Eric Knysz shot Butterfield without warning after the trooper pulled the truck over and was leaning toward Knysz’s open driver’s window, starting to say something like “How’s it going?”

Butterfield had called in the truck’s license plate number and his location on Custer Road north of Townline Road before getting out of his patrol car. That led ultimately to the couple’s capture.

According to Sarah Knysz’s testimony and recorded police interviews with Eric Knysz, her husband shot Butterfield because Knysz was driving on a suspended license – a suspension that was due to end less than six hours later – and had concealed firearms in the truck, a felony, and feared going to jail.

It’s never been established why Butterfield pulled the truck over, but Sarah Knysz mentioned one possibility in her trial testimony: The truck had a muffler “loud enough to upset people.”

Sarah Knysz, 21, is serving a prison sentence of two to five years for accessory after the fact to murder and a concurrent 11 months for car theft, for her actions helping her husband get away after he shot Butterfield. The couple's daughter was reportedly born Christmas Day and, according to a Facebook page supporting Sarah Knysz, was in the care of Sarah's mother.

Eric Knysz's mother, 50-year-old Tammi Spofford, faces the same two felony charges as Sarah Knysz. Spofford is scheduled for trial May 21-23 in Mason County.

John
S. Hausman covers courts, prisons, the environment and local government for
MLive Muskegon Chronicle. Email him at jhausman@mlive.com and follow
him on Twitter.